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It’s a safe bet to say that all firefighters remember their first structure fire and an even safer bet to say that all firefighters remember their first interior attack.For me it was one of the most memorable days of my life. We arrive on scene and have heavy fire showing. I pulled the line to the front door and prepared to make entry with a Senior Lieutenant. We made it through the front door and had heavy fire in front of us. I opened the line and lost all visibility, I sprayed water aimlessly and had no idea if I was actually hitting the fire or not. I continued to flow water as we moved closer towards the seat of the fire until I had water running out of the front door of this structure.We backed out and let our back up crew move in. There was still water rushing out of the front door and we still had a growing fire. I have operated like this on almost every fire I have been to. We make entry and open the nozzle and lose every bit of visibility and continue to spray water aimlessly. Wouldn’t it have been nice to take all of that water that was pouring out the front door and actually put it to good use? Also, has anyone noticed that they don’t feel the heat near like they use to in newer gear? Why are we still going into environments that we have no clue what the temperatures are? We’ve all heard about modern fire behavior and how fast fires are getting to that flashover point, why are we still allowing firefighters to fight fire blindly? All these questions have been on my mind for quite some time and the answer has been there for several decades; the thermal imaging camera. My department has had TIC in service for many years, however the only time we used it was to find hot spots and searching for victims that were ejected out of their car during an MVA. Why aren’t we using this tool to give us eyes on an interior attack? The answer to that question is more complex.My experience has been you have to remember to grab it off the rig first and foremost. The other issue is you only have two hands and when you’re trying to pull a line, plus grab the irons or whatever other tool you need, you exceed the capacity of those two hands. I made it a point to finally remember the TIC and have another firefighter grab the line and tools at a structure fire a little over a year ago. I started out great, scanned the door, checked our temperature, and even did a quick scan for victims as we entered the first room of the house. After that, things went downhill, I pointed the camera aimlessly and had no clue what I was looking at, then the line was opened and the steam made that camera more useless than owning a Lamborghini and having no clue how to drive. I quickly quit looking at the camera and went back to my old ways. I came out pissed off and frustrated that this camera didn’t do what I expected it to. Several weeks went by and I expressed my frustrations to some of the other members on my fire department. The question was asked, have you ever been taught how to actually use this thing? It hit me, the only knowledge I had of the camera was what the salesman told me about it and a couple quick videos on the internet. I knew nothing about it.After that we scheduled a class with Brother Andy Starnes and my life changed! He addressed those issues that I had and they all made sense. Folks, the reality is that we never knew how to use a halligan properly until somebody showed us, same thing goes for the TIC. You can go out and spend thousands of dollars and if you don’t know how to use it properly, it’s like that Lamborghini that you don’t know how to drive. After the class with Andy, the real hard part came in, how do we implement this? Be on the lookout for our next article to see how we implemented this with limited staffing. If you’re looking for a great thermal imaging class, please contact us. We will get you fixed up with Andy Starnes and it can be done in your firehouse. Esprit De Corps-John Schott